75. Everything Goes as Expected
75. Everything Goes as Expected
After the meal, our next stop was the theater—the very place we could use the tickets the Vampire had left us.
Even from the outside, the building was so extravagantly opulent that it looked as if ordinary commoners—much less anyone of Foreign Worker origin—wouldn't be allowed to set foot inside.
I felt a twinge of worry we might get thrown out for not being nobles, but the gatekeeper who took our tickets actually looked at us with deep reverence.
"My apologies for the delay. To think you are guests personally invited by our theater's greatest patron. Please, come right in."
...I'd had my suspicions, but that Vampire was really the top patron here?
Well, he'd probably secured a bunch of fake identities to move through society. That's how he'd managed to stay hidden despite being one of the most wanted criminals. While I was thinking that, the staff member guiding us to our seats glanced at me and Marilyn and broke into a pleased smile.
"Ah, a couple, I see. Right this way—I'll show you to the couple's reserved seating."
"Huh? No, wait—"
"Yes, we won't refuse."
"Miss Marilyn?!"
"Hoho, what does it matter? It simply means we make a fine pair in people's eyes."
With that, she took my hand and strode ahead toward our seats.
I couldn't bring myself to shake off her hand, so I reluctantly sat down in the embarrassingly intimate seat the staff member had led us to.
The seat practically screamed, "Hello, we are a couple!" at a glance...
"Could it be that you dislike this?"
Just as the pressure of that implication was starting to settle in, Marilyn turned to me and asked.
I agonized over how to answer, then finally sank into my seat with a deep sigh, resigning myself to it.
"I'm only going along with this for tonight."
Right. I'd decided to devote this night to Marilyn.
As we sat side by side waiting for the theater lights to dim, Marilyn's voice began to drift out faintly from the darkness.
"I wish you could keep going along with me... from now on."
A voice brimming with the faintest hint of emotion.
I tried to pretend I hadn't heard it, but I couldn't ignore the warmth of her hand overlapping with mine.
I simply stayed quiet, held that hand, and focused on being present for my time with her.
****
-Murmur, murmur.
We stepped out into the street after the play ended.
All around us, passersby were sharing their thoughts on the performance or heading home in their carriages. Amid the bustle, Marilyn turned to me with an expectant look.
"What did you think, Hyosung? Did you enjoy the play?"
"Ahaha, well... I guess I'm just not the type for that sort of thing..."
Usually in these situations you're supposed to share your impressions with the people you came with, but I'm so accustomed to visual media like TV and movies that the play didn't really pull me in.
On a screen, they close up on the actors' faces and add dynamic effects, but sitting in a seat, the only way to grasp what was happening on stage was through exaggerated gestures and lines shouted at the top of their lungs.
My interest waned right from the start, so immersion was impossible. At some point, I lost interest entirely and just focused on gauging the reactions of the people around me...
In the end, the only thing I could remember was staring blankly at Marilyn's face.
"I'm sorry. We came all the way to see it, but unlike you, I couldn't take it seriously."
Yeah, unlike me, she'd watched the play with absolute sincerity.
Given that her very profession is a bard who writes stories, it makes sense she'd find stories crafted by others both interesting and deeply moving.
The fact that I couldn't share that experience with her made me a little dispirited, but she was unfazed by my apology, simply holding my hand a little tighter.
"It's alright. Even if you didn't quite understand it, Hyosung... just being together like this is more than enough."
A tender whisper, our fingers interlacing.
The shyness in the gesture should have warmed my body, but for some reason, in that moment, a sudden anxiety washed over me instead.
Because as time flowed past our scheduled dinner, I could feel the moments I had left with her shrinking and shrinking.
"Then this much..."
It's okay. Even if today ends, there will be plenty of time together in the future—that's what I wanted to say.
The reason I couldn't bring myself to say those words out loud is probably because I already foresaw how our meeting was going to end.
"Is this much... good enough?"
I worried that this anxiety might somehow leak out to her, but she only gripped my hand tighter.
With her usual composure gone, her eyes fixed on me with an almost precarious look.
"...Yes. For now, this is enough."
Even as my heart wavered at that look, I ultimately stayed silent and resolved to hold her hand and stay with her.
No matter how disappointing an outcome might await us, just a little longer.
If this was a dream that had to break, then I wanted to leave behind even slightly fonder memories.
"Is there anywhere you'd like to go?"
"Anywhere is fine, as long as I'm with you, Hyosung."
Hoping to meet that expectation, I resolved to follow wherever my feet took me and enjoy it all with her, just as she wished.
A series of small street performances in crowded areas, minor incidents, shared observations about the buildings we passed...
Sometimes we'd step into a shop to browse, and if something caught my eye, I'd buy it and place it on her.
"Hyosung, how do I look? Does it suit me?"
"It's pretty. Truly."
Not a single lie in those words.
That thought had never wavered from the moment we first met until now.
"Are you sure you can eat that much?"
"Hoho, it's fine. Traveling actually takes a surprising amount of energy. Would you like a bite too, Hyosung?"
"Mm, alright, just one bite then."
"Here you go. Say ahh~"
I liked the way she'd get close to me without any sense of distance.
Not with just anyone—only with me.
Because I could feel her treating me as someone special, and that in turn made her someone special to me.
"Hoho."
The gentle smile she always wore.
The soft laugh that escaped whenever her lips parted, and the whispers meant just for me.
"Ahaha~"
At some point, everything about her grew emotionally charged, and the moment that atmosphere reached me, I burst out laughing right along with her.
Because it made me happy that I was the one who drew out that genuine, joyful laugh—the kind I'd never seen on her face when we first met.
It was as if the person called Marilyn had become whole by meeting me...
I wanted that smile, now brighter than when we first met, to go on forever.
"...After escaping my lord's side, and before returning to you, I wandered the world."
But cruelly enough, the time to slowly draw our night to a close had finally arrived.
Before I knew it, the moon had risen, and the lights filling the nighttime streets were winking out one by one.
Walking ahead in an alley barely lit by a dim lamp, she stood behind me as I made my way home, and began to whisper, as if continuing her story.
"It's a chaotic world. Aside from the Empire, nearly everything that could be called a nation has been destroyed. Only a few survivors remain, clinging to small tribes or empty traditions just to keep their legacies alive."
"...Miss Marilyn."
"Even the beastkin, whom humanity sees as threats—I saw them getting caught up in the undead. Those very beings people consider calamities are, in this chaotic world, nothing but survivors."
"......"
"...Curious, I even ventured beyond the continent, but it's already fallen into a state humanity can do nothing about. As if they were trying to isolate us on this land, they wouldn't even allow anyone to leave."
What she was telling me was the truth of this world, the kind of truth you only ever heard secondhand from someone else.
The moment her firsthand account reached me—the sights she'd seen, the paths she'd walked with her own two feet—I felt anew just how precarious this world truly was.
It wouldn't be strange if this daily life crumbled at any moment.
In the blink of an eye, everything could vanish. Living on meant continuing to exist in that anxiety...
"And within such a chaotic world, there was one thing..."
As I was slowly realizing this, I felt her weight gradually pressing against my back.
Her hands came up as if to embrace me, but then they fell away, and she simply rested her head against me instead.
"...a special existence, one I never forgot, not even for a single moment."
Having expressed her heart with just that humble gesture, she stood behind me and whispered.
"That those feelings haven't changed even while we were apart... you know that too, don't you, Hyosung?"
I did know.
How she feels about me.
"I know it's a presumptuous request."
She had staked her life to betray the one she'd sworn loyalty to.
And after wandering through this chaotic world, the place she chose to return to was by my side. I knew exactly what immense significance that held.
"Even so, I've come this far. So whatever the outcome might be, I think I have to say this."
"......"
In the silence that followed,
taking advantage of that pause, I slowly turned my head in the darkness to look behind me.
Unlike me, who had refused to face her true feelings head-on and only now mustered the courage to look back at her, she had been looking only at me from the very beginning, waiting for the chance to convey her heart.
"Hyosung."
Marilyn Sutherland.
A person who, perhaps even before the connections I've made now, had the potential to claim that future instead.
"Would you please... become my partner?"
The moment I heard that precarious confession, I clenched my dangling hand into a tight fist, mulling over the words I'd been keeping locked inside.
The time had come.
And yet, the reason my lips couldn't easily part was likely because my resolve was lacking.
If only we'd had a little more time...
I felt a pang of regret, thinking that if only the parting that day had been given a little more time, the future now might have been different.
"I'm sorry, I..."
But in the end, it was only a matter of sooner or later.
I had to give her the answer I'd already decided on.
Precisely because I thought of her sincerely, I'd resolved to forget her, as I'd written in the letter.
"I cannot be with you, Miss Marilyn."
And to fill that void by simply swapping her out for the new connection I'd made in the meantime... that would be an insult to the very feelings I had for her.
****
'I cannot be with you, Miss Marilyn.'
The moment those words, born from that heart, spilled out of the crystal ball.
Airi, who had replayed her foreseen future countless times, bit her lip and took a moment to ruminate over the content once more.
'...He said he can't be with me.'
'I'm sorry. I already... have someone I must be with.'
The first. The one he chose to be with. And the future, likewise.
No one knew better than she—who had proven her heart by embracing him time and again—that his vow was not a light one.
Her faith that she would be with him for all eternity was something she could be confident in, precisely because she knew what kind of future the current him was heading toward.
"...That's right. The one you chose... is me."
"You chose me. So I suppose I must trust you too, Hyosung."
The future may be able to change, but even a changed future is still rooted in the present.
That was why Airi had replayed only a single truth to herself, over and over.
Whatever the future held from here on, the past him and the bond they forged—and the fact that the current him had chosen her.
'Well, she did return far too late.'
The crux of the matter was how the other party would accept that reality.
At the very least, in the future she had foreseen, there was no sign the other party would try to force him.
She had already been prepared to die just to leave his side, and far too much time had passed to simply return as if nothing happened. She'd likely come this far with the resolve to quietly back off if he rejected her.
'It can't be helped. I don't want to make things difficult for Hyosung either, so just like this...'
Yes. If the future was set, surely she would give up here.
-Crackle.
However, her opponent was the Demon Lord's Army's Rank 2.
Given her track record of changing a foreseen future multiple times, believing things would flow as scheduled when she was tied to a figure who could be the catalyst for such whims would be a narrow-minded assumption.
"Since things are going as foreseen, I should begin my preparations as well."
Therefore, what she needed immediately was a plan.
A meticulous and perfect plan capable of stopping a being who held the terrifying possibility of altering the future, even in ways she herself couldn't predict.
"...Airi, from this point on, do not let your guard down."
Airi, who had been mulling over this plan countless times leading up to this moment,
waited in the place she had calculated the other would arrive at first, steeling her own resolve.
"Because changing the future against a Transcendent is no easy task."
All for the sake of Love and Mission.
Keeping at heart that this was all to find the best possible future where those two things could coexist.